


You Don't Have To Set Yourself On Fire

by Maggie_GoldenStar1530



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adorable Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune's Laugh Is Life, Din Djarin Is A Good Dad, Din Djarin is Bad at Self Care, Din Djarin is a coffee snob, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Sam Vines Boot theory, accidental angst fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25368007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie_GoldenStar1530/pseuds/Maggie_GoldenStar1530
Summary: As with so many of these things, Din blamed Cara.She’d found a version of caff that was… really damn tasty. Unlike the acidic stuff he normally got- dark, harsh, over-roasted, and most importantly, cheap- she gave him what she called, “The good caff.”-----Partially a plot bunny, partially an ode to some really GOOD coffee that Different_Frequency gave me, and entirely a meditation on being bad at self-care.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 119





	You Don't Have To Set Yourself On Fire

As with so many of these things, Din blamed Cara.

She’d found a version of caff that was… really damn tasty. Unlike the acidic stuff he normally got- dark, harsh, over-roasted, and most importantly, cheap- she gave him what she called, “The good caff.” 

“You’re gonna like this, Mando.” It was light in flavor, but  _ strong _ . And it had a light spicy flavor to it. Mild by Mandalorian standards, but so pleasant. 

And then when he went back to his usual shitty caff, it was… unpleasant.

No, it was disgusting. 

Din sighed heavily. He knew that caff was a bad habit to get into- you never knew when you had to, hypothetically, spend the entire day in the goddamn desert with some punk ass kid who naturally turned on you the first time a more experienced villain waved some glory under his nose and threatened your kid all for some fucking wordfame that wouldn’t have served him well anyway, but this goddamn kid was too young and stupid to know that, and you wouldn’t have a chance to drink anything until the next night… not a great situation to have a caff craving.

_ Hypothetically. _

But, at the same time, when you have to stay up for possibly days on end, and you don’t want to have to deal with stims, and you’re getting too old to just muscle your way through it, you need something. Caff was a lot less dangerous than a lot of things, easier to get and (usually) didn’t involve a criminal enterprise.

Usually. He wasn’t sure about the Good Caff, though. Anything that good had to go through one of the big organizations. That was just how things worked. 

But it was so. Good. 

Cara had given him a small jar of the Good Stuff. And he didn’t want to waste it… by just… drinking it. But the alternative… He sighed again, and messaged Cara. 

“Where do you get the Good Stuff? How much is it?”

Her first holomessage response was just her laughing. Very hard. The Baby laughed along, even though he had no idea what he was laughing at. It hardly mattered, he just loved the sound of Cara laughing. 

Din would admit, very quietly, in the privacy of his own head, that he also enjoyed the sound of Cara laughing. Laughing hadn’t been a big part of his life, not until the Baby appeared. Then there was laughter all the time. But Cara’s laugh… that was something rare and special and not something she shared with many. Not the deep belly laughs that came from the root of her soul and were usually at least partially at his expense. 

But he didn’t mind. 

Anyway, after she got done laughing, she sent another message with coordinates and an amount of credits. It… wasn’t huge, but it wasn’t small, either. He had it… even after factoring in the cost of fuel and food and repairs and the myriad of things the Baby needed. The ratty coat had finally been tossed, and he had several changes of new clothes- more than Din had. The carrier had been repaired, and he’d gotten an actual crib for the Baby to sleep in. And new blankets. And some stuffies and other toys. And some books. And a monitor to keep an eye on him. 

And maybe a couple of second hand books on parenting for himself. He’d always helped out with the Foundlings- raising Foundlings was pretty much a group activity, but the bulk of his involvement recently had been as Provider, making sure they got as much as he was able to scrape together. The actual parenting part was not something he had a lot of experience with, and he figured the more advice he could consider and discard, the better.

Even now, when his responsibility was to provide for his Clan of Two, he would still set aside whatever he could to send back to the Covert. It wasn’t much, and there was no amount that would pay off the debt of guilt for bringing so much death on them, but it was what he could do. His needs were the bare minimum. He would go without a lot to make sure those Foundlings were safe and well taken care of and loved. 

And now he was thinking about wasting credits on caff? How selfish was that?

But, after Cara, who knew him, sent a third message saying “I’ll meet you there with some pucks,” he reluctantly plugged in the coordinates and off they went. 

“You’ll get to see ba’vodu, you’ll like that.”

“Yeah!” 

The Baby had acquired three words. “Yeah!” “No!” and much to Din’s delight that he never showed to anyone except the Baby, “Buir.” Any other thing he wanted to communicate was accomplished with a series of coos, trills, and a large variety of raspberries. One of the books Din had said that human children should be talking in basic sentences by about two or three standard years, but how that applied to this strange 50 year old Baby Din wasn’t sure. They did suggest talking to encourage language development, so Din had been talking more than he’d ever talked in his life. 

And the Baby loved it. He soaked up attention like a sponge, and smiled whenever he saw Din. Din had to admit that it was nice to have someone actually, visibly, genuinely happy to see him, and not the credits he brought home. The Baby’s joy was for him, and him alone. 

But Cara’s smile when she saw them was pretty good, too. She stroked the Baby’s ear, and he hummed in happiness, and she thumped Din on the arm, and he smiled. Even though she couldn’t see the smile, he felt like she knew it was there in the warmth in his voice. “Hi.” 

“Mando.” She jerked her head. “Follow me.”

That was another thing he appreciated about her. She knew his name, he’d functionally given her permission to use it, and she almost never did. She understood how intimate it was. He and the Baby followed her to a small shop in a back alley with the entrance covered by a ratty curtain, and Cara actually checked the perimeter before going in. 

Inside… Cara shot him a look. “Turn off your filters.” 

It smelled amazing. It smelled… Din had a flash of a memory from when he first was a Foundling, of walking past the kitchens and smelling a dizzying array of spices and smells, and his Buir making a pleased sound and saying, “Yeah, that’s what home smells like.” 

After the Purge, he didn’t smell those smells anymore. Here, though….

A woman came from the back room and froze at the sight of him. She was young, maybe in her mid twenties. He was pretty sure he’d never seen her before, and he’d developed a pretty good memory for faces. She blinked several times, then shook herself slightly. “Welcome.”

Cara grinned. “Ruusa! He had some of the caff. You know, the good shit. And now he needs more.”

The woman, Ruusa, nodded with a smile that seemed… tense. Fragile. “Is this the friend you were telling me about?”

“Yeah.” 

Ruusa looked him up and down, and then at the Baby, who was peeping at her with shy curiosity. “Hello, little one.” The Baby gave a tiny wave, then buried his head in Din’s shoulder. “So. How much would you like?”

Din made a small shrug, and Cara answered, “He travels a lot, so… maybe a couple of kilos?”

Ruusa nodded. “And do you have the press?”

“The… what?” 

“This tastes even better if you have the right equipment.” Ruusa showed him a wildly overcomplicated contraption that required it’s own water source, and while he made an appalled face at both the ridiculousness and the price, he merely shook his head. She grinned, like she knew exactly what had been going on behind the helmet, she offered a much simpler small pitcher with a press and a filter. “This will do for you. Nor breakable, just fill it with hot water and let it steep for five minutes, filter, and drink.”

“Filter?”

“....did you drink the grounds, Mando?” Cara asked.

Din didn’t answer, which was answer enough. She let out a delighted laugh and safely behind the helmet, he smiled. The Baby joined in with the laugh.

It was such a good sound. 

“How much?”

Ruusa looked him up and down, at the shiny beskar armor that covered a faded gambeson, scuffed, repaired boots, the cape that was showing more tatters, and the clean, happy Baby in his new clothes. “I’ll throw it in for free.” 

Cara negotiated the price for the Good Caff, down at least 20% from what she told him, and they took it all back to the Razor Crest. Din sighed as they stowed it, holding the brewing pitcher in his hands. 

“What is it, Mando?”

“It’s too much. I shouldn’t have spent this much.”

“When was the last time you bought something for yourself that you didn’t absolutely need?”

He paused, and stared at her. She stared back, eyebrows raised in the question. The answer was never. He didn’t want much, he’d been raised to not need much, and he’d trained himself to need even less. 

“When was the last time you didn’t get the absolutely cheapest version of what you needed?” 

That was a low blow. His boots were good, even if they’d needed some repairs over the five years he’d had them. But if he’d gotten the cheapest version of the boots, then he would have needed to replace them within a year, and it would have ended up costing more in the long run. A bounty hunter is only as good as his boots and his blasters. 

Didn’t mean that he didn’t cut back on his rations and made the ship as fuel efficient (meaning cold) as he could so the portion that went to the Covert was the usual size. 

“I gave you a nice pillow because that bag of rocks made me sad.” Cara pointed to the ancient, lumpy, beaten down pillow on his cot. “Where is it?”

Din glanced guiltily up at the cockpit. The Baby’s carried needed more padding, especially since the pram Kuiil had made for him was lost in the battle on Navarro. So he used the new pillow, and the Baby slept comfortably and it was fine.

It was fine.

“Mmmmmhmm. There’s no sin in taking care of yourself.” 

“I don’t need it.”

“Everyone needs it.”

“It’s…”

“Din.”

He looked at her. Her face was serious and concerned and sad. “It’s fine.”

“You deserve to have something that’s yours. Something nice. And if it won’t be a pillow, or a decent bed- although I swear at some point you might actually get old enough for your back to need a decent bed- then let it be this. Something that makes you a little happy.” 

“What makes you think it makes me happy?”

“You called and said you wanted more.” She shrugged like it was perfectly obvious. He realized that yeah, it was. 

He sighed again. “It is good.” He should have been able to resist. 

“Look, I know that you carry the guilt of what happened to the Covert on your back, and look, seriously  _ look _ at the attention you shower on your kid. He wants for nothing, when if you could ask him, I bet he’d tell you all he needs is you. But you have to take care of yourself.” 

“I do.”

“You don’t. You didn’t have a fully stocked med kit until you got him because you’d give it away. You eat the shittiest rations and drink the shittiest caff and make sure he’s got the best. Would your Matriarch be okay with this?”

Din sighed again. She wouldn’t, and he knew it, which was one reason he was relieved that the only way that credits could be delivered to the Covert was through- 

“I’m going to tell her next time I bring them your credits.” Cara raised an eyebrow in challenge. 

“That’s a low blow, Dune.” 

She smirked, because she’d scored a point and they both knew it. “You don’t need to set yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm, Djarin.” 

“Who else will?”

“You can’t go on like this. You just can’t. Let yourself have this one thing.” 

Din sagged a little. The caff was good. It reminded him of happier times, and for once in his life, remembering those times wasn’t so painful he couldn’t bear it. It reminded him of his own buir, and knowing it was time to get up when the behot was brewing. It reminded him of uj cake and celebrations and simple meals and…. He looked down at where the Baby was standing, looking up at him. 

“Okay.” He picked up the Baby. “We should have gotten something for you.” 

Cara pulled a small packet out of the bag from the shop. “Looks like she threw something in.” She smelled it. “Smells kinda spicy.”

Din opened it, and the Baby immediately made grabby hands for it. “It’s uj’alayi.” There was also a note, written in Mando’a.

“For the Foundling. Remember that you’re no good to him dead.” 

  
  


Din left Cara and took off with the pucks she’d given him, with the pitcher of the Good Caff brewing, and the Baby cheerfully chewing on part of the uj cake. 

“Did I ever tell you about the time the al’verde and I got into a fight as trainees and knocked over a whole rack of jetpacks…?” 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally, the plot bunny for this fic was going to be "The Baby drinks coffee and bounces off the walls of the Razor Crest for three days, Din sighs heavily." And who knows, maybe that'll happen. 
> 
> But then it just because this study of a man who is shit at self care.
> 
> Go take care of yourselves, my lovelies. 
> 
> Din's musing on boots are directly related to the Sam Vines Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness by Terry Pratchet. (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so-rich-vimes-reasoned)
> 
> Mando'a Translations:
> 
> Buir: Father (I mean, it's "parent" but in this case...)  
> Ba'vodu: Aunt, in this case  
> Al'verde: Commander (It's Paz)  
> Uj'alayi: uj cake - dense, very sweet flat cake made of ground nuts, syrup, pureed dried fruit and spice


End file.
